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Architecture and Urban Design
Director: Don Freeman
In this documentary, photographer Don Freeman explores the homes designed and lived in by notable American artists, revealing the inventiveness derived from the dialogue between each artist's practice and the construction of their handmade homes. Ranging from the romantic (Hudson River School painter Frederic Church's Olana, framing views of the Catskills to echo his paintings), to the futuristic (Paolo Soleri's silt-casted structure Cosanti growing out of his bell-making experiments in the Arizona desert), to the sublime (George Nakashima's mid-century modern ode to the beauty and versatility of wood), what they all have in common is a fierce spirit of individual expression that deserves deeper examination in this age of architectural standardization.
DVD / 2015 / 87 minutes
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Graham Stirk is a senior partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, having first joined the practice in 1983 when it was titled the Richard Rogers Partnership. As principal architect on buildings that include the office scheme 88 Wood Street, the luxury residential building One Hyde Park, two airports and a winery, he helps steer the design direction of the practice.
Here Stirk discusses The Leadenhall Building - a speculative office tower in London's financial district. The tower is inclined along the south side to avoid blocking a key view of St Paul's Cathedral, with core services housed in a vertical "cassette" on the north side. The concept of distinct served and servant spaces, borrowed from Louis Kahn, recurs throughout the work of the practice. Stirk also explores the challenges of building across the street from the Lloyd's Register of Shipping - the first building he worked on after graduation and, in contrast to Leadenhall, one of the most bespoke office buildings on the planet - and explains the 11 year lag between commission and completion.
CD-ROM / 2015 / 40 minutes
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American-born Charles Jencks is a landscape architect, theorist and critic best known for his Garden of Cosmic Speculation, near Dumfries, Scotland, and his writings on post-modernism. He has designed landscapes projects around the world, including Parco Portello in Milan, Northumberlandia near Newcastle, England and Wu Chi at the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing. Jencks is also co-founder of the Maggie's Centres - a series of cancer care centres designed by leading modern architects, named in honour of his late wife Maggie Keswick.
In this talk, Jencks discusses his recent project Holding The Eco-Line, a landscape design for the Suncheon Bay Expo in 2013. He explains the development of the design, and his Korean hosts' reaction to it, as well as the importance of symbolism in his work. He also discusses his latest creation the Crawick Multiverse, inspired by cutting edge theories of the origin of the universe.
DVD-ROM / 2015 / 39 minutes
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Martha Schwartz first came to prominence with her Boston bagel garden - a radical manifesto for a more artful approach to landscape design. Her recent projects include Dublin Docklands Grand Canal Square in Dublin, Mesa Arts Centre in Arizona and Jacob Javits Convention Center Plaza, New York.
In this talk, she describes her project Fengming Mountain Park in the Chinese city Chongqing for a major Chinese developer. The project is a rectangular section cut through a large construction site, designed to showcase the sales centre for a series of forthcoming residential towers. Building on the idea of zigzagging movement of water down a mountain, she has created a processional route across the site, marked by a series of monumental orange cut-steel structures - like origami mountains on legs - that glow at night.
This is a truly exciting time to be working in China, she says, with construction taking place on an epic scale and developers just beginning to appreciate landscape architecture as art-form.
CD-ROM / 2014 / 48 minutes
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Masters of architecture
This is the definitive story of how one generation of British architects, born within five years of each other, changed the world with a bold new approach to architecture.
Lords Norman Foster and Richard Rogers and Sirs Nicholas Grimshaw, Terry Farrell and Michael Hopkins are responsible for some of the most iconic buildings of our times, from Paris' Pompidou Centre, Beijing Airport and the HSBC Tower in Hong Kong to London landmarks such as Lloyd's Building, MI6 Headquarters and the 'Gherkin'.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the five men and their collaborators, this series tells the story of how their youthful dreams of building a better world - and shared fascination with the possibilities of new technology and advanced engineering - turned architecture into one of Britain's strongest cultural exports. How did people once derided as 'hippy architects' come to be so successful - and influential?
Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.
DVD / 2014 / 50 minutes
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Masters of architecture
This is the definitive story of how one generation of British architects, born within five years of each other, changed the world with a bold new approach to architecture.
Lords Norman Foster and Richard Rogers and Sirs Nicholas Grimshaw, Terry Farrell and Michael Hopkins are responsible for some of the most iconic buildings of our times, from Paris' Pompidou Centre, Beijing Airport and the HSBC Tower in Hong Kong to London landmarks such as Lloyd's Building, MI6 Headquarters and the 'Gherkin'.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the five men and their collaborators, this series tells the story of how their youthful dreams of building a better world - and shared fascination with the possibilities of new technology and advanced engineering - turned architecture into one of Britain's strongest cultural exports. How did people once derided as 'hippy architects' come to be so successful - and influential?
Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.
DVD / 2014 / 50 minutes
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Masters of architecture
This is the definitive story of how one generation of British architects, born within five years of each other, changed the world with a bold new approach to architecture.
Lords Norman Foster and Richard Rogers and Sirs Nicholas Grimshaw, Terry Farrell and Michael Hopkins are responsible for some of the most iconic buildings of our times, from Paris' Pompidou Centre, Beijing Airport and the HSBC Tower in Hong Kong to London landmarks such as Lloyd's Building, MI6 Headquarters and the 'Gherkin'.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the five men and their collaborators, this series tells the story of how their youthful dreams of building a better world - and shared fascination with the possibilities of new technology and advanced engineering - turned architecture into one of Britain's strongest cultural exports. How did people once derided as 'hippy architects' come to be so successful - and influential?
Note: This BBC production not available in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, USA, Canada.
DVD / 2014 / 50 minutes
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Directed by Christopher Beaver
Follows San Francisco's innovative efforts towards achieving zero waste, thereby dramatically reducing the city's carbon footprint.
Only one third of the waste in the United States is recycled or composted. Why? Industry, through its practice of planned obsolescence, plays a major role; our lives are almost totally dependent on unrecyclable petroleum products. In order to reach zero waste, we need to change our relationship to garbage and view the things we discard as resources, rather than waste.
RACING TO ZERO examines our society's garbage practices in terms of consumption, preparation, use and production, and discovers some amazing solutions in San Francisco, which is successfully taking the necessary steps to reach zero waste. Cities all over the United States have instituted zero-waste policies of their own, and it is through these mandates that we are challenged to think differently about not only how we handle our garbage, but what it can become.
DVD / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 56 minutes
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By Ruben Abruna
A designer from Puerto Rico pioneered green architecture thirty years ago, and today he confronts climate change with sustainable constructions such as a house without a roof that is completely independent of the power and water utilities, a micro-eco-house on wheels, a pre-designed sustainable house, a parachute-house and a solar-electric car, among others.
When architect Fernando Abruna Charneco, FAIA, began designing in the 1970's many dubbed him as "crazy" for putting nature first before erecting a building, a practice which later would be labeled as sustainable green architecture. He inherited the design mantra of "doing more with less" from his mentor R. Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the Geodesic Dome and the Dymaxion car, with whom he worked as an apprentice.
In times of climate change and the doomsday consequences it entails, THE ABSENT HOUSE delivers a much-needed, hopeful, pro-active message that we can live sustainably while preserving the planet for future generations.
DVD (Color) / 2013 / 55 minutes
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Architectural historian Iain Borden is Vice-Dean at the Bartlett School Of Architecture. His work focuses less on architecture with a capital A, than on everyday spaces and buildings, from bus benches and bill boards to food stalls in Japan.
In this talk, Borden discusses urban space as a social product. Applying the theoretical approach of Henri Lefebvre, he explores how different people experience the city, focusing on skateboarders, car drivers and the French film-maker Jacques Tati.
CD-ROM / 2013 / 45 minutes
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Director: Stefan Haupt
One of the most iconic structures ever built, Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia is a unique and fascinating architectural project conceived by Antoni Gaudi in the late 19th century. More than 125 years after construction began, the basilica still remains unfinished. Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation celebrates Gaudi's vision and the continuing work of architects as they strive to complete the colossal project while delving into the process of artistic creation in a historical context.
La Sagrada Familia was commissioned by the Order of St Joseph in 1882. After conflicts arose between the Order and the original architect, 31 year old Antoni Gaudi was hired to complete the design. A devout Catholic and architectural prodigy, Gaudi envisioned a place of worship that combined elements of classic French Gothic style and the curvilinear, organic aspects of the budding Art Nouveau school.
Despite decades of delays, thousands of artisans, laborers, and designers have contributed to the ambitious and glorious landmark. Inspired by Gaudi's vision, the film explores our fundamentally human search for the meaning of existence, and the quest for creative expression.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Catalonian metropolis, the documentary investigates the structural developments of the Sagrada Familia while allowing the audience time to observe, perceive, and reflect upon the historical, artistic and personal significance of the basilica.
DVD (Catalan, Spanish, French, and German with English Subtitles) / 2013 / 90 minutes
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Director: Jason Hutt
When best-selling author Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein) began to build his first sukkah, a small hut that Jews build and dwell in every fall for the holiday of Sukkot, he wanted to move beyond the generic plywood boxes and canvas tents that have become the unimaginative status quo. He discovered that while the bible outlines the basic parameters for what a sukkah should look like and how it should function, it leaves plenty of room for variation and interpretation. Foers thought, 'what if contemporary architects and designers were challenged to design and construct twelve radical sukkahs? What would they come up with?' And so was born the design competition and exhibition known as "Sukkah City."
Sukkah City chronicles the architecture competition created by bestselling author Joshua Foer and Roger Bennett (Reboot co-founder) that explored the creative potential of the ancient Jewish sukkah and created a temporary exhibition of 12 newly designed sukkahs in the heart of New York City. The film goes behind the scenes of the jury day, the construction, and the exhibition to provide an entertaining and inspiring portrait of the project's visionary architects, planners and structures and celebrates an exciting, singular moment in the American Jewish experience.
DVD / 2013 / 67 minutes
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The economic impact of buildings with a high "wow" factor on cities like Bilbao, Manchester, and Chicago has brought back in vogue the debate on the role of architects in society, producing neologisms such as "starchitect" to characterize their media relevance. With provocative works like the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Center in New York, Daniel Libeskind has gained universal acclaim. A true Renaissance man-with a background that features music, poetry, and opera set and costume design-Libeskind envisions architecture as a reflection and active part of the local culture, whereby buildings engage a lasting dialogue with their inhabitants. He sees sustainability as not only a technological attribute, but also a measure of social relevance. In this Falling Walls lecture, Libeskind discusses his more than 40 current projects and his innovative online teaching approach at the Leuphana University Luneburg, aimed at building the "ideal city of the 21st century."
DVD / 2012 / 16 minutes
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DREAM BUILD is a series about Aussies who have been lucky enough to turn the dream of building their own home into a spectacular reality. The front door will open to some of Australia's cutting edge homes revealing what can happen when the brief is pushed on design and budget.
Each owner will share their experience of throwing down ambitious and challenging briefs to their architect in the hope of creating a one in a million home. The architect will reveal their design secrets and how they rose to the challenge to give their client not only the home but also the lifestyle of their dreams.
Ep 1 - Hill House
Ep 2 - House for a Car
Ep 3 - Goldfields
Ep 4 - Warburton
Ep 5 - Maleny House
Ep 6 - Castlecrag
Ep 7 -East Melbourne
Ep 8 - Smith House
Ep 9 - Beach Shack
DVD / 2012 / 63 minutes
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DREAM BUILD is a new series about Aussies who have been lucky enough to turn the dream of building their own home into a spectacular reality. The front door will open to some of Australia's cutting edge homes revealing what can happen when the brief is pushed on design and budget.
Each owner will share their experience of throwing down ambitious and challenging briefs to their architect in the hope of creating a one in a million home. The architect will reveal their design secrets and how they rose to the challenge to give their client not only the home but also the lifestyle of their dreams.
Ep 1 - Brent Knoll
Ep 2 - K House
Ep 3 - Rolling Cubes
Ep 4 - Inner House
Ep 5 - Marimenko
Ep 6 - Flipped House
Ep 7 - Cocoon House
Ep 8 - Jilliby House
Ep 9 - Angaphora Home
Ep 10 - Wheatsheaf House
DVD / 2012 / 70 minutes
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Directed by Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Influential Danish architect Jan Gehl argues that we can build cities in a way which takes human needs for inclusion and intimacy into account.
50% of the world's population lives in urban areas, by 2050 it will be 80%. Cities have become the primary human habitat. According to revolutionary Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, if we are to make cities sustainable and livable for people we must re-imagine the very foundations of modern urban planning. Rather than examining buildings and urban structures themselves, Gehl and his team meticulously study the in-between spaces of urban life, the places where people meet, interact, live, and behave.
How do the spaces that surround us enhance or disturb our interactions with others? How can we make our streets more accessible by foot or bike? Through his world acclaimed work, Gehl has been leading a revolution in urban planning that has been transforming cities worldwide. From the expanded pedestrian spaces in New York's Union Square, to Copenhagen's famed bike lanes, to the rebuilding of earthquake devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, Gehl's team bring real solutions that promise a more humanistic dimension to cities where people are not displaced by congested streets, skyscrapers, and the car-centric urbanism of the 1960s and '70s.
Stunningly photographed, THE HUMAN SCALE travels around the world to explore how Gehl and other like minded designers, city planners, and urban activists have begun to transform such cities as as New York, Beijing, Christchurch, and London.
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 77 minutes
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Life Architecturally follows internationally-acclaimed husband and wife team, Robert McBride and Debbie Ryan to discover what inspires their groundbreaking concepts, designs and architecture.
The program observes the pressures of building a multi-story, twin-tower development, and a revolutionary new school, in the shape of an infinity symbol, alongside the construction and design of their new family home.
It also follows Rob and Debbie as they prepare their pitch to win the contract to design and construct a prestigious new billion-dollar building that will be the biggest cancer care centre in the Southern Hemisphere. There is a personal reason behind their passion to create a building of hope for cancer patients and their families. The stakes are high. The vision is bold.
DVD / 2012 / 52 minutes
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Director: Mike Dorsey
In 1959, a working-class government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, Neutra agreed. Thus began an unlikely friendship that would last for the rest of Neutra's life.
Considered the "father of California Modern Architecture," Time Magazine put Richard Neutra on their cover in 1949, ranking him second only to Frank Lloyd Wright among America's greatest architects. The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Desert Retreat explores how a man of his stature came to befriend this modest, small-town family, and his love for the home's stunning desert setting, which Neutra compared to the grandness of the mystical Gobi Desert.
Now owned by the actress Kelly Lynch (Road House, Drugstore Cowboy) and her writer-producer husband Mitch Glazer (Scrooged, Magic City), the post & beam-style home and its exotic surroundings shine through beautiful 5K digital cinematography, and the story comes to life through interviews with Richard Oyler, Kelly Lynch, Neutra's two sons, including modern architect Dion Neutra, and well-known Los Angeles real estate agent Crosby Doe, who has represented homes by some of history's greatest modern architects.
DVD / 2012 / 46 minutes
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By Stephen R. Kellert and Bill Finnegan
A design revolution that connects buildings to the natural world, buildings where people feel and perform better.
Biophilic Design is an innovative way of designing the places where we live, work, and learn. We need nature in a deep and fundamental fashion, but we have often designed our cities and suburbs in ways that both degrade the environment and alienate us from nature.
The recent trend in green architecture has decreased the environmental impact of the built environment, but it has accomplished little in the way of reconnecting us to the natural world, the missing piece in the puzzle of sustainable development.
Come on a journey from our evolutionary past and the origins of architecture to the world's most celebrated buildings in a search for the architecture of life. Together, we will encounter buildings that connect people and nature--hospitals where patients heal faster, schools where children's test scores are higher, offices where workers are more productive, and communities where people know more of their neighbors and families thrive.
Featured are communities and buildings from Scandinavia, Germany, France and Britain to the Canadian and American northwest, American southwest, and New England. They include: California Academy of Sciences, Doernbecher Children's Hospital, Fallingwater, Viaduc des Arts, Google/YouTube Headquarters, Sahlgrenska Hospital (Psychiatric Department), High Point (Seattle Housing Authority), Johnson Wax Building, Sidwell Friends Middle School, Oxford Museum of Natural History, Village Homes (Davis, CA), and Kroon Hall (Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies).
Amongst those interviewed are: Edward O. Wilson, Bill McDonough, Judi Heerwagen, Jason McLennan, Tim Beatley, Bill Browning, Bert Gregory, Kent Bloomer, Claire Cooper Marcus, Michael Taylor, David Orr, Gus Speth, and Richard Louv.
Biophilic Design points the way toward creating healthy and productive habitats for modern humans.
DVD / 2011 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 62 minutes
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Director: Norberto Lopez Amado & Carlos Carcas
A portrait of one of the world's premier architects, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? follows Norman Foster's unending quest to improve the quality of life through design. By revealing his origins to how his dreams and influences inspired the design of emblematic projects like the world's largest building and its tallest bridge, Foster offers some striking solutions to humanity's increasing demand on urban centers.
DVD / 2011 / 78 minutes
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In 1990 European physicists set out to test the limits of cost-effective energy efficiency. The result was the first passive house, a four-unit townhouse that combined heavy insulation, airtightness, and heat-recovery ventilation to achieve reductions of up to 90 percent in the energy required for heating and cooling. This program introduces the passive house concept-popular in Europe, but slower to catch on in the States-and showcases some beautiful examples in Austria and Germany. Viewers meet co-originator Wolfgang Feist, who explains the mechanics behind the design; Henry Gifford, who hopes to popularize it in the U.S.; and Dieter Roskoni, who still lives in the first-ever passive house.
DVD / 2011 / 22 minutes
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Directed by Vera Aronow, Sarah Mondale, Roger Grange
The construction of a huge mall 18 miles north of Manhattan reveals the role of money, power and politics in the age of sprawl.
Twelve years in the making, MEGAMALL documents the origins of the massive Palisades Center mall and its impact on the suburban community of West Nyack, New York, 18 miles north of Manhattan.
The film kicks off when the biggest mall developer in the Northeast comes to the smallest county in New York to build its biggest mall yet on a toxic dump, one mile from the filmmakers' homes. That move sparks a citizen uprising which lasts almost 20 years. It also inspires the filmmakers' quest to understand the dramatic events unfolding right in their backyard.
MEGAMALL turns out to be a local saga of epic proportions. We see big money overwhelm local governments, zoning and planning boards to impose a massive development project on a community, extract milliions, and move on -- leaving the local community to bear the costs of road maintenance, increased crime, and shuttered stores downtown.
Featured throughout the film is provocative commentary from leading urban critics and writers, who give viewers the real story behind the mall-building business and challenge Americans to think about the consequences of our obsession with shopping. They include authors James Howard Kunstler (The Geography of Nowhere); Roberta Brandes Gratz ("Malling the Northeast" for The New York Times Magazine); and real estate economist Donavan Rypkema.
MEGAMALL is a gripping story of ordinary Americans who confront the forces that are changing the face of our nation. It is designed to give students and communities around the country the tools they need to understand the forces propelling growth. It encourages people to think of themselves as citizens--not consumers--and to take action in their own communities.
DVD / 2010 / (Grades 9-12, Adult) / 81 minutes
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City Hall and grass roots groups in Chicago are working on open space, green buildings and an educated citizenry to create a sustainable city.
Chicago is a dynamic and fascinating city with spectacular architecture and a dramatic setting on the shores of Lake Michigan. The largest metropolis between the coasts, it has the biggest population, the most problems...and the greatest potential.
Edens Lost & Found tells Chicago's story by threading together the stories of a diverse group of its active and committed citizens including volunteers, professionals, students and community leaders -- among them, the city's mayor, Richard M. Daley. During his tenure, Chicago made a powerful commitment to open space with the creation of the 24-acre Millennium Park built atop a parking garage in the heart of downtown. The city has also become a laboratory for green architecture with the award-winning City Hall Roof Garden and Green Roof Initiative.
Whole neighborhoods are getting involved in the effort to create more livable communities. Eden Place is a prime example of grassroots determination to reclaim for themselves pieces of Eden that had been lost to generations of apathy.
And out in the suburbs? An Elgin High School environmental instructor convinced the school board to set aside adjacent land as an outdoor classroom and nature preserve. Here, her students are learning to become leaders in the movement to create sustainable ecosystems.
DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2006 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes
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To people driving past the old Holiday Drive-In Theater site in Boulder, Colorado, it might seem like a new neighborhood has sprung out of the ground overnight. But those who worked on the project's development know better. Collectively, hundreds of thousands of decisions and choices were made to create the 330-home neighborhood, where affordability and sustainability are primary goals. It wasn't exactly a simple mission.
In DESIGNING A GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD, director David Wann follows the progress of the Wild Sage Cohousing Community project, where future residents participate in the design of their own neighborhood. The stated architectural goal at the Wild Sage site in Boulder is a "zero emissions" neighborhood in which solar energy, energy efficiency, and changes in behavior eliminate the need for fossil fuels.
The master site developer, The Boulder Housing Partners (BHP), has a vision for creating affordable neighborhoods that are also lively, efficient and pedestrian friendly. More than 400 people with low and middle incomes will live at Holiday, many as first-time homeowners.
DVD (Color) / 2004 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 54 minutes
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By Joseph Hillel & Patrick Demers
In 1967, at the end of a career spanning more than six decades, which included the design of the Seagram Building in New York, the Lake Shore Drive Apartment Buildings in Chicago, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) designed a simple gas station near Montreal. The story of that gas station serves as the point of departure for REGULAR OR SUPER, which examines Mies' entire body of work (more than 70 buildings) and a sparse style that reflects his motto that "less is more."
Mies began his architectural career in Germany early in the 20th century and during the Thirties taught at the famed Bauhaus School of Art and Design in Berlin. In 1938, after the school was shut down by the Nazis, Mies emigrated to Chicago where he designed 22 buildings for the Illinois Institute of Technology. Over the next three decades, in a radical break from the predominant beaux arts style, he refined a distinctive, modernist architectural style emphasizing glass and steel in a variety of buildings whose structures creatively integrated surrounding public space.
Featuring stylish cinematography and an evocative jazz score, REGULAR OR SUPER illustrates many of Mies' classic buildings, combining these striking facades with observations from some architecture superstars, including Rem Koolhaas, Elizabeth Diller and Phyllis Lambert, which are interlaced with anecdotes from customers and neighbors of the gas station, plus comments from his biographer and family members.
REGULAR OR SUPER is a fascinating and informative introduction to the work of one of the 20th century's most influential architects and a thought-provoking demonstration of the social and artistic contributions that architecture at its best can make to our urban environments.
DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2004 / 57 minutes
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William McDonough, Michael Braungart & the Birth of the Sustainable Economy
Architect Bill McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart bring together ecology and human design.
While some environmental observers predict doomsday scenarios in which a rapidly increasing human population is forced to compete for ever scarcer natural resources, Bill McDonough sees a more exciting and hopeful future.
In his vision humanity takes nature itself as our guide reinventing technical enterprises to be as safe and ever-renewing as natural processes.
Can't happen? It's already happening - at Nike, at Ford Motor Company, at Oberlin College, at Herman Miller Furniture, and at DesignTex - and it's part of what architect McDonough and his partner, chemist Michael Braungart, call 'The Next Industrial Revolution.'
Shot in Europe and the United States, the film explores how businesses are transforming themselves to work with nature and enhance profitability.
DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 55 minutes
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In his recorded talk, Terry Farrell concentrates on that aspect of his work to do with transportation systems and their connectedness to other parts of the cites they are in, and how this can be improved by their design. He describes work already completed and work as yet incomplete or still on the drawing board at the time of the recording. Farrell has always been fascinated by the problems of transportation, even for his student thesis; and he tells us of later ideas he has promoted: for linking railway stations across the River Thames, for example, so as to provide double access for passengers. He is a great proponent of travel for pleasure and in this category we have the huge symbolic structure he was completing on Hong Kong's 'Peak', reached by a cable-drawn tram much enjoyed by tourists. Also for Hong Kong is the Kowloon railway station which will rise on reclaimed land and will connect to the new airport, the Metro and local lines. But the most integrated piece of transportation design that he has been involved in is for a transport centre for Seoul airport, the arrival and departure point for all passengers by whatever method of transport, and is highly specialised in its relationship with air travel. Terry Farrell received his architecture education at Durham University and the University of Pennsylvania. Before setting up his own practice in London he was in partnership with Nicholas Grimshaw from 1965-1980. He is a master of three-dimensional planning and has built many very large scale buildings in Britain.
CD-ROM / 1996
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The British architect Richard MacCormac trained at Cambridge University in the early 1960s and, after some travel in the USA and practical experience in England, established his own practice in London in 1969. He is now senior partner in MacCormac Jamieson Prichard and Wright. Concurrently he has always been involved in architectural education, mainly at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, which has led to a series of important university commissions in England. He has published many articles on urban design, housing and architectural history, and he is a member of Britain's Royal Fine Art Commission.
The largest and most recent urban design scheme that he has undertaken, together with a developer and the architects The Fitzroy Robinson Partnership, is for Spitalfields, an area on the edge of the City of London. There were three contending proposals, but MacCormac's was the one selected.
In his recorded talk he distinguishes between what he calls "foreign" and "local" urban transactions. "Foreign" are those that do not relate to the locality (banking, warehousing, factories, etc.), "local" are those that do (shopping, eating and drinking, housing, etc.). He explains how he has reconciled these public and private interests in his design for Spitalfields.
CD-ROM / 1988 / 26 minutes
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Architect Rob Krier, born and reared in Luxembourg and later Munich, has taken Austrian nationality and, since 1976, practised in Vienna where he is also a Professor and Dean in the Technical University. His book "Stadtraum In Theorie & Praxis" in 1975, analysing urban space systems, brought him instant recognition. His main goal is the establishment of articulated space in cities.
He seeks to reproduce the quality of public life of older cities which he misses in modern cities; and to rediscover the essence, scale, architectural organisation and geometry of the house in relation to itself and to the city. In his talk he adds that he wants to build in such a simple way that the man in the street can understand what he is doing. Work on low-cost housing is, for him, the most fulfilling as it concerns people's everyday life.
Though he uses classical categories in defining urban spaces - squares, courtyards, porticoes, streets - he rejects utterly fashions or isms in architecture. Historical spatial experience is introduced as a new concept - for example, in the Ritterstrasse housing. In a short statement in German at the end of the talk he despairs of the ugliness of modern cities. But he is dedicated to the struggle for truth and beauty and finds solace in his sculpture and beautiful drawings, some of which are shown in these images.
CD-ROM / 1982 / 22 minutes
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The late Sir Denys Lasdun evolved an architectural approach and vocabulary now widely recognised, and which can be seen in his major post-war works. He was awarded Britain's Royal Gold Medal in 1977, and a Knighthood in 1976.
In his talk he explains that he subscribes to a set of ideas relevant to himself, reasonable in quality and which engage with history. These ideas are about an architecture of urban landscape, which is an extension of the city or the landscape and which indeed seek to promote and extend human relationships. His buildings are related to other buildings which may be close in space however far off in time, but they do not make stylistic concessions to the past. The buildings in fact are often a metaphor for landscape and he tries to express this through a visual organisation of 'strata' and towers.
As the architectural historian William Curtis has pointed out in "A Language & A Theme" (RIBA Publications, 1976), this architecture of urban landscape turns its back on the transience and brashness of a merely mechanistic world, and tries to elicit basic responses and to unearth fundamental human meanings.
CD-ROM / 1980 / 26 minutes
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